I have mixed feelings about this series of spots from the Workplace Safety & Insurance Board in Ontario. (And if the “Safety & Insurance Board” sounds boring, well, you’re in for a surprise.)
The spots show regular workers — a sous chef, a forklift driver, a welder — who suffer rather dramatic and painful calamities due to improper conditions at their workplaces.
Positive spin: The topic of “workplace safety” puts us to sleep. It sounds boring and vaguely dorky (inevitably the solution will involve eye goggles, right?). And yet workplace safety itself is critical — people do get hurt, people do die. To break through the disinterest and inertia, you need to be bold. You need to shock.
Negative spin: It shocks alright. Even people who enjoy movies like “Saw” and “Hostel” will probably wince at this spot, about an accident that befalls a young female chef. But does the shock reinforce the core message of the campaign? If the core message is to take workplace safety seriously, maybe it works. If WSIB wants behavior change of some kind, I’m not clear what it is.
The spots are so brutal that I wonder how the campaign can be (or whether it should be) sustained. I would love to be a fly on the wall at those creative discussions. (”Hey, what if we spotlight someone who’s dismembered by a rogue meat slicer…?”)
I agree they’re brutal, and I think the first step to behaviour change is to scare us into taking workplace safety seriously. In New Zealand we have an issue with getting people to prepare for civil defence emergencies – earthquakes, tsunamis etc. A lot of the civil defence people we work with are concerned about scaring people too much about what might happen. As a result their messages are too soft. We need to be scared to take action.
Dan, good post. I believe that as horrific as these ads are, it seems that is takes this kind of attention grabbing technique to snap people out of their complacency. It sticks.
I was once in a US Navy machine shop that that had a poster reminding people to remove all jewelry. The image was that of a hand and from where the wedding ring used to be to the tip of the finger all that was left was bone and bits of flesh. I’m sure that it had an impact on anyone thinking they might not take off their ring just this once.
BTW: Great book. I was given a copy at an Adaptive Path conference where Chip gave a presentation. Unfortunately someone swiped it before I finished it.
Holy crap! You won’t find me in a restaurant kitchen anytime soon…
On serious not we live in a culture of fear. If you can “scare” people enough they will change. Or maybe not?
No one would argue that workplace safety is not important. However, these gory ads are an elaborate social marketing campaign orchestrated to manipulate the public into talking about accidents, safety and prevention rather than talking about the failure of workers compensation boards to compensate the victims. WCBs in each Canadian province (and in the US) have come under a lot of scrutiny for their avoidance of paying fair compensation to disabled workers. The fact that people are talking about the ads rather than the dysfunctionality of the WCB system shows that this orchestrated social manipulation campaign is working.
WCBs in Canada and the US represent employers (the only ones paying into the fund). Therefore WCBs will do whatever they can to lower fees for corporations. One way is by denying compensation payments to disabled workers. But this would be socially unacceptable unless the public can also be manipulated into believing that the worker is somehow negligent or at fault for causing the accident. In this social marketing campaign, WCBs are subtly adopting the language of the anti-drunk-driver campaign – ” zero tolerance” “negligence”, etc. to manipulate public attitudes towards injured workers. They also use the term “accidents” rather than “injuries” to take the focus away from the person and onto the event. These ads, and other orchestrated ’social engineering’ techniques lay the foundation for WCBs to justify a reduction in injury compensation payments to disabled workers by manipulating public attitudes toward disabled workers.
Those injured workers in the videos would realistically spend the rest of their lives in poverty fighting the WCB for compensation.
The way to reduce injuries is to make companies accountable for workplace safety violations through realistic fees, not protect unsafe companies from these higher fees by denying disabled workers’ claims.
In Ontario, Canada, it has just been revealed publicly that the WSIB has been giving millions of dollars of rebates to companies that have caused workplace fatalities. Injured workers groups have been complaining about this for years but were not listened to because of the socially engineered stigmatization of injured workers as lazy malingerers and complainers.
If you think the WSIB’s ads are scary, check out the Canadian Injured Workers Society at http://www.ciws.ca for a real eye-opener!
seems then, ripe for a follow-up campaign from someone who takes issue with the WCBs. A scare campaing depicting what happened after these victims came home from the hospital. hhmmmm.
Great idea, johnrhopkins! This is actually starting to happen naturally as more and more injured workers are starting to post their own ‘horror stories’ on YouTube. (see http://www.youtube.com/user/InjuredWorkers for a start).
However, a good documentary producer could go a long way with that. Is Michael Moore out there listening…???
One of the first times the chef ad ran was during an NHL hockey game being played on a Saturday afternoon. You can imagine how many kids were watching TV on their own when that ad came on.
After that, it was only shown during the evening. I haven’t actually seen it aired any time in past the few months.